


Dream On

by Sugercube75



Series: Tales Told In Silence [3]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Dream Bubbles, Dream bubble deaths, M/M, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Sadstuck, Shoosh Paps, but happy things too, mute!Karkat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-13
Updated: 2013-03-04
Packaged: 2017-11-25 08:35:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/637038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sugercube75/pseuds/Sugercube75
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karkat has a very vivid dream.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sweet Nightmares

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gilliganpantyhose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gilliganpantyhose/gifts).



When you realize you’re conscious you’re walking, or well…floating? Yeah, you’re floating. That’s a thing God Tiers do. You should mention that you’re a Knight of Blood, and you are proud of your title. It means you protect people, like Dave even if he doesn’t think he’s a hero. You’re not much of a hero either but John always said you were. It’s weird knowing you’re dead and still technically being alive. The thought of if you can die-die crosses your mind but you shake it off. That’s so incredibly stupid and not worth your time. That and the bubble is starting to form now.

You’re in what looks like a red forest, the trees are tall and bushy at the bottom then they get thinner at the top, humans have names for them but you’re not sure what they are. You think you’ve seen a few green trees like this in John’s neighborhood. They don’t really look familiar to you but then again where you lived there weren’t a lot of trees. As you look around you can see there are buildings starting to form. Tall, grey, there’s a Sgrub symbol on one and a satellite on another. There are other people here too. You can see Equius and Nepeta in dreamer gear sitting and talking by one of the trees, there are what looks like hundreds of Aradiabots floating around or interacting with others. You see quite a few little blonde humans in various suits, you assume those are all Dave. Kanaya, Terezi, Feferi, there’s even a few yous. You also notice a God Tier Eridan sitting nearly by his own, a Dave struts over and plops down beside him. Weird.

You decide to walk around a bit. You’re looking for specifically two people. Gamzee, you haven’t seen a single glimpse of your asshole clown moirail ever in a dream bubble, and John. You’ve seen a few, but none of them reacted to you. They were all too wrapped up in some other troll or one of his human friends. You’re looking for a specific John, one that knows you. Instead you run into a Terezi who grins and chats with you for a bit, though it’s basically her talking and you listening, nothing too interesting, ‘How’d you die? How are you? Ok bye.’, type thing. Soon enough you find another you. It’s weird talking to yourself. You meet up with one of your dreamselves, he was killed on Prospit by Jack, he seems to have learned to talk with his hands? It’s hard ‘talking’ to him, a lot more typing and screen-showing. No one bothers you both though. You ask about John and he shrugs then walks off.

It sort of hurts how many Johns don’t know you and how many Karkats don’t care about John. What even happened in those timelines to make that happen? It hurts because love is supposed to be this great constant thing right? At least true love is. It makes you question just how important John is to you and you are to him. Of course you’d die for him, even if you weren’t already dead. You’d die a heroic death for him. You’d die a million times over again to keep him safe. That’s love right? UGH. Why is this so complicated?? Trolls don’t have love, they have red feelings and black feelings and ashen and pale. Love is no where in there. Red feelings is someone you hold dear and you want to protect and not a long term thing. Red feelings fade with time. It’s not love. Pale feelings are someone you want to keep calm and help and you feel pity for them but not enough to be red for, they’re someone you can trust and they last forever. That’s not love either. Love is so complicated and confusing and horribly painful. You love John with all your heart and you just want to keep him safe and you want to be with him forever and always love him even if he doesn’t love you back. You feel like ripping off your horns at this point because DAMNIT WHY ISN’T THIS EASIER?!

Suddenly your vision is nearly gone, there’s dark red fabric half covering your eyes. It stops your head-rant and makes you look up. Of course you can’t see who did it because one they’re behind you and two there’s a hood over your face. You turn around and just stare at the teal pants and black shoes. What the fuck. Then he giggles. You look up and John pulls the hood off your face, he grins and your heart flutters and it also aches just a little bit.

“Hi Karkat!” He just stands there while you stare at him. He looks perfectly fine, just like every other person you’ve met in this bubble but you still feel the need to hug him and kiss him and check every single part of his body for so much as a scratch then demand who did it. But you don’t. Instead you huff and glare at him. “What’s wrong? Cat got your tongue??” He bursts out laughing because ha-ha that’s fucking hilarious obviously.

You pat the pants of your God Tier outfit and find nothing. Lovely. You hold your hands up and shrug showing that you have no way to communicate. John quiets his laughing to a few giggles then motions for you to hold out your hand. You do so and he makes a few slow awkward symbols on your hand. You watch as he does it. The dreamer you did the same type of things. You look up at him with a very confused look.

He repeats the motions. “’Hello Karkat’! Is what it says.” He grins and does another few hand motions. “’How are you’?” He looks up and just smiles at you. It’s so odd because you don’t know how to answer or anything, well even if you could. John giggles and pulls out his dad’s PDA and holds it out to you. You take it hesitantly and start typing.

‘WHAT WAS THAT?’ You show him and the motions are so familiar. Type, show. Type, show. Always the same. You hold your hand out for him. You sort of want him to do the weird hand motions again.

“It’s called ‘Sign Language’; this troll-lady showed me how to do it. She was really nice and excited. Um, her name was Meulin or something.” John smiles and repeats a few things in your hand, you don’t really know what the motions mean but you’re sure you can learn them if you wanted. “It was hard learning them but I think it was worth it because now I can teach you and then we can talk without the PDA or computer or anything!” He stops motioning his hand and just holds yours. You like this. You’re both dead but you’re together. And that’s all that matters right? You’re here with John and you love him so, so very much even if he doesn’t quite love you.

‘THANK YOU JOHN.’ You show him the message and he smiles and does a few signs in your hand. You look at him curiously but he just motions for the PDA. You hand it to him with a confused face.

‘i love you karkat.’ Is what the message says when he hands it back. You blink a few times because the message doesn’t seem right, you’re so confused, he does?? You look up at John and just open and close your mouth a few times because even if could talk you wouldn’t be able to right now. So instead you just add onto the message.

‘I LOVE YOU TOO MORON.’ And he just laughs and hugs you and kisses your forehead and then your lips and you just let him because he’s an idiot. But he’s your idiot and you love him so much that sometimes it feels like your heart is just going to flutter and jump right out of your chest and spew gross bright red blood everywhere. That’s how much you love him.

After that gross little emotional moment John starts to teach you how to do Sign Language. He starts with a few simple things, ‘hello’ ‘goodbye’ ‘how are you’ ‘yes’ ‘no’ things like that. It’s not that hard but it’s not easy either. It’s a lot of memorizing but you’re excited because this is another way to be heard. You can’t wait to start talking to John and everyone else with this.

It’s weird because what happens next is sort of a blur. You hear a scream and instantly you and John are up and running towards it. You think it might have been Terezi. That scares you because no matter how much you love John, you’ll always be red for Terezi. She’s important to you, just like John, just like Gamzee, just like every other friend you have. They’re important and you want to protect them. You’d die for every single one of your friends.

What you find is confusing. Everyone in the dream bubble is gathered around, that’s about twenty or thirty dead trolls/humans. It’s weird seeing everyone all grouped up and instantly you want people to run and hide. But you don’t get the chance to order it or tell John to. You don’t get the chance because at that moment you notice someone, or something, that you’ve never seen before. You see him, he’s a giant, much taller than you or John or even Gamzee. His skin is a deep green and reptilian. It looks rough and you can see patches of scales along his arms and other places you can see skin. He looks like a skeleton but not really, it’s only his head to be honest and his eyes are sunken in and flashing all sorts of colors. What you see is all together terrifying.

Your first instinct is to pull John behind you which is what you do, he protests but then sees the monster too and just about freezes. You’ve never seen John freeze up in battle, you’ve watched him fight so much and never once has he shown that terrible freezing fear he’s showing now, you don’t even have to look at him to tell. You feel John’s hand in yours a moment later and you squeeze his hand because you’re scared too. You’re scared for yourself and for your friends and for John. You don’t know why but you’re terrified.

You growl, in that weird scratchy not normal way you do. You growl and try to puff up and hide John behind you because that’s what your instincts are telling you to do. Protect you’re matesprit. Protect John. Protect everyone.

The monster looks around and now you notice his fangs. Sharp teeth, not like highblood fangs, those are like shark teeth. They’re more like Piioniic double fangs, only every one of his teeth are pointed fangs. You flinch when he opens his mouth and you tense up, ready for an attack. You don’t know what you’ll do but you have to save John. Protect him. Always protect John. It’s hard not to just run away when you see this monsters mouth start to glow. By now you know you’ll die. You know now that you can die again, permanently. You know that you can’t save John or Terezi or anyone else. You can’t even save yourself. You’re terrified to die and you’re terrified to lose John.

When the blast comes the last thing you feel is John squeezing your hand tight and him pulling you close, but you never feel his chest against your back because you can’t feel anything anymore.

You jolt up from the horn pile. If it weren’t for your moirail’s arms wrapped around your waist you probably would have tumbled down and smashed into the metal floor. Yeah, metal floor. You’re awake now but that doesn’t make things any better. In fact it simply makes things worse. Now you’re upset and you want out of Gamzee’s grip that he has on your waist, you’re suffocating and crying and you need air. You want out. You want John.

You don’t know how you’re not waking your moirail up but you think you just might because you can’t calm down and you’re panicked and you’re pretty sure John just died. What kind of shitty nightmare was that?! You’ve never had a dream that bad since the whole Prospit and Derse got destroyed thing. You had died then too now that you think of it. 

When you finally get that fucking clown asshole to wake up he shoosh-paps you until you’re calm enough to type out what happened with minimal typos and have it all make sense. You describe being another you and meeting people and looking for John and then finally finding him and talking and learning sign language and then the monster. You start hiccupping and crying at this part and it takes Gamzee a while to calm you down enough to type again.

“All up and calm yourself lil pale bro.” Gamzee paps your cheek and pulls you closer to him, you’re both laying on your sides facing each other on top of this incredibly stupid horn pile. You sniffle and just press your forehead against his chest. He feels cold, not just like highblood cold but like he’s been gone for a while. You decide not to question him about it because at least he was here when you woke up and he calmed you down. “Everything’s going to be all mother fucking fine, I got you safe and sound all fucking snuggled up in my arms here bro.” He even nuzzles your head for emphasis.

You sigh and purr at him because you feel like shit and you just want to go back to sleep to check on John but what if something like that happens again and you wake up as another snot crying mess? And what if this time Gamzee’s gone running through the fucking air vents like an asshole and everyone else on this fucking meteor couldn’t give a shit about you and you just sit here on this stupid pile like a whimpering sobbing little wriggler? No, you won’t sleep. Not for a long time. You don’t want to sleep or go in another dream bubble for a long, long time. You hate that you won’t be able to see John for a while but you can’t go back to sleep yet. You just can’t.


	2. My Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s been a while and Karkat hasn’t been sleeping much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided that it would be best if I stuck these two 'chapters' together.

John's POV

“I’m just worried ok? I mean, I haven’t seen Karkat in forever! Since like, January!” You sigh and slump back in the giant bean bag chair you and Jade are lounging in. She’s reading a book while you yap her ear off. You know she knows you like Karkat, you just haven’t told her straight up. She’s never really asked to be honest.

“John, you know dream bubbles are hard to navigate. I even have a hard time getting to the right one and my aspect is space! You just have to calm down. You’ll see him again soon, I mean, I’m sure he’s fine. I’ve been talking to Dave; he says Karkat’s just been sleeping less.” She shrugs and looks over to you with a small smile. “It’s ok; it’s only been two weeks.”

Two weeks. Has it been that long? It seems like forever. You mumble unhappily and shift onto your side to face Jade. She’s gone back to reading but you know she’s listening. There isn’t much to talk about usually but when there is you listen to each other. You’re siblings after all. Well, ecto-siblings but siblings. It’s the same thing, she’s your sister and you love to pour your stupid teen drama bullshit on her.

Jade sighs and closes her book, she sets it on the floor and shifts onto her side too so you’re both facing each other. “Jonathan Egbert.” She’s using her grown up mom voice. You don’t even know how she learned to sound like that because you know she didn’t have a mom. You didn’t even have a mom. Rose is the only one with a mom and you’re pretty sure her mom never did any of that stern motherly scolding-type stuff, but that’s beside the point.

“My name’s not Jonathan, Jadine.” You pout at her in the manliest way you can. Which is pretty manly. Just saying.

“John. You need to calm down. You’re practically shaking! You’ve been freaking out over the past two weeks since you had that weird nightmare!” She frowns when you shudder. “I’m sorry. Karkat’s fine. Stop worrying, we’ll be together soon. It’s just a few months now!” She tries to smile but it doesn’t help.

That dream had been horrible. When you woke up you were crying and in a sweat and you practically jumped off your bed and slammed into the wall trying to get away. After that you had freaked out and Jade came bursting in threatening you for all the racket you were making. She had to calm you down and then she refused to let you sleep alone after you told her what had happened. After that you just sort of curled up in her arms, even though you’re like half a foot taller than her now, and stayed awake all night.  
“I know how bad that nightmare scared you John, but that’s all it was, just a nightmare. Karkat didn’t die, you didn’t die and neither did Dave or any of the other trolls. And there wasn’t any big green monster. It was all a dream.” She scoots closer and wraps her arms around your shoulders to pull you into a hug. You want to believe it was just a nightmare but you get the worst gut feeling that it was more than just a dream. You just want to teleport to the meteor and make sure Karkat’s alright and just hug him tight and kiss his forehead and never let go. But…you’d never leave Jade alone and you know she can’t teleport you. So you’re stuck here waiting for the last few months to go by. Waiting for April and your birthday and for the day that Jade finally lands the ship in the new session.

Waiting was such a pain in the ass.

 

Karkat’s POV

You’re tired. You’re so, so tired. If only you could rest for a little bit? Maybe you could take just a little nap, just for a few hours. You could curl up in a pile somewhere on the meteor where no one could bother you. That’d be so nice.

But then that nightmare is back, fresh under your eyelids. The terror and panic sets in again and leaves you scrambling to stand up, to wake up again. You blink furiously and look around, waiting for that monster to show up. When it doesn’t come you still don’t relax. You’re still terrified. You’re terrified because you still don’t know how John is. I mean, you get some info from Dave but that’s not enough. You want to go see John but you can’t. You’re afraid that if you go back to sleep you’ll lead that monster to the real John and it’ll destroy him for good. You’re so scared about it that you hardly sleep anymore. You only sleep often enough that you don’t dream, you don’t go to dream bubbles or anything. You just sleep.

After a few minutes of focusing on calming your heart rate you make your way from the dark room you don’t remember wandering into. You look around lost but well, that’s because you kind of are. Your shoulders slump and you can practically feel yourself getting older. You hate how your life’s pretty much rolled down a hill since you had that shitty dream. First that happens and then Gamzee just starts disappearing more and more often. Then Terezi starts doing all this kismesisitude bullshit and she starts disappearing too and then you find her curled up in her cape covered in shitty soda with no pants. This has happened multiple times by the way. Oh, oh! Then Rose and Kanaya seem to be attached at the fucking hip and you can’t get a moment alone with Kanaya to talk to her. The only person who seems to give a shit is Dave.

You sigh and lean against the doorway. You wish John were here. Or that you were with John. Either way you’d be happier. You wouldn’t have to deal with this bullshit. You really wish you had your friends back. You wish this stupid game wasn’t so fucking stupid. It takes you a few minutes before you decide to get moving. You should probably find your way back to the main lab now.

The whole place is dark and musty. You hate it when you wander around like some asshole when you’re dead tired like this, especially when you find yourself completely lost once you come to. It takes you a good while to find your way back to familiar halls, you got lost a few times and had to turn around but you made it. Almost that is. You’re in that creepy room with all the giant tanks of dead things. Fucking lovely.

You check your crabmunicator and really you don’t know why you’re checking. No one’s online except for Dave. No one’s ever online anymore except for Dave and you. You were kind of hoping that for once Gamzee might be on and that he’d talk to you. You really wish that he would talk to you. You miss your ex-moirail.

It’s not hard to ignore the big glass tanks. You keep your eyes on your feet as you walk by them and soon enough you’re past that room and only a minute or so away from the main lab. That’s good. Even though no one really hangs out in the main lab anymore you still hope someone’s there to talk to you. Ok so talk is a bad word to describe what you do but still.

It’s a short walk down the hall before it opens up to the lounge of sorts that you’ve made of the main lab. You look around, not even expecting anyone. Why would you? No one spends time here anymore. Rose and Kanaya are always off together, Terezi(when she’s not comatose on the fucking floor somewhere) is always off sneaking around with Gamzee then there’s Gamzee who sneaks around doing fuck knows what in that stupid fake god tier outfit. UGH. Then Dave is always in his room or wandering around muttering to himself. You personally don’t really have much to do; you might as well go talk to the dancestors though really you’d rather cull yourself…ok so maybe that’s a little dramatic. You like Meenah, but that’s it. Kankri talks too much and so does Eridan’s dancestor, then Kurloz, who you only know because you mistook him for Gamzee once but he’s just creepy. Aradia’s dancestor you assume is a bitch though you don’t know what she’s saying most of the time, plus she does this weird tongue thing which you assume is vulgar and don’t like it so yeah.

Ok you should stop ranting to yourself now because you can hear someone coming. Well sounds like two people? Sure let’s go with that. You’d make yourself look busy but really you don’t give a shit enough to not make it look like you’re sort of just standing in an empty room all alone so you kind of just wander over to one of the chairs and sit yourself down. Whoever it is will probably just ignore you anyway. You absorb yourself into your crabmunicator. Whoever’s coming sounds like they’re making a big fuss? Ugh.

You look up briefly when the two come in; you almost smile when you see that it’s Aranea and Meenah. Aranea talks a lot, not as much as Kankri, but close. She’s also a lot nicer than Vriska so that’s some positive points to her. You blink at the two, they don’t seem to have noticed you yet but they’re fighting over something and you’re pretty sure you know what it’s about.

“Meenah, you can’t possibly think it’s safe to go fighting that monster on your own.” Aranea sounds concerned. Aranea always seems to be worried about Meenah, not that she can’t take care of herself you’ve seen how Meenah takes care of herself but you can understand that. You’re always worried about Terezi, even if you’re not exactly flushed for her anymore but she’s still your friend. You hate how messed up she’s become lately.

“It’s fine! I’m already dead, I’m not gonna double die, Aranea.” Meenah shrugs it off and smiles at the taller cerulean troll, it’s more of a grin and you notice now that they’re holding hands ok. Last time you’d checked the two were moirails but now? Now it looked like they were a little redder than that. You frown from your chair and attempt to hide more, it suddenly feels like a much more private conversation and like you shouldn’t even be in the same room as them right now. It’s a good thing you’re so small ok.

“Yo Crabcake,” Meenah sounds closer, you look up and there she is, leaning over the chair. You glower at her and huff. “you eavesdroppin’ or what?” She reaches down to ruffle your hair right between your horns and you snap your teeth together and reach up to swat her away. You hear Aranea giggle and see her standing a bit to the side of Meenah.

“I apologize, Karkat. We didn’t know you were in here.” She smiles apologetically at you and you just roll your eyes. How could they have possibly known you were in here anyway?

“How you been, eh? Haven’t really sea-n you around the dream bubbles a whale lot lately. Are ya avoidin’ me or what?” Meenah pouts down at you. You pull out your PDA, which you haven’t had to use for a while really.

‘YOUR EGO IS SHOWING MEENAH.’ You show her the message and Aranea reads it over Meenah’s shoulder, she giggles while Meenah just pouts at you. ‘ALSO, SO IS YOUR QUADRANT.’ You glance between the two and Meenah just grins and waggles her eyebrows at you while Aranea blushes a nice shade of cerulean. You also notice Meenah’s earfins wiggling too and that’s to be honest really cute.

“Yea? Sea Hermit Crab, when you get all growns up an shit like us, there comes a time when you start wantin’ some searious redrom lovin’ an that’s when you reelize that there’s the hottest piece a ass right next ta you an ya sorta just go for it then—“ Aranea clamps her hand over Meenah’s wide grin.

“I do think that’s enough. Karkat doesn’t want to know what happens next.” Her whole face is blue and it’s pretty amusing, plus Meenah’s eyebrows keep waggling at you and the whole situation would make you chuckle if you could. You roll your eyes at the two, Meenah smirks under Aranea’s hand and the two of them just make your heart hurt a little because you really miss John. You miss being with him and hearing his voice and you miss the feel of his hand, and his cold human feet and it must be showing on your face because Aranea’s whispering to Meenah and suddenly the blueblood is gone and Meenah’s perching herself on the arm of the chair.

You frown up at Meenah and she just sighs and pats your head.

“You been sleepin’ lately, Shrimp?” She looks down at you; she’s concerned in a way that could only be described as pale. Your lower lip trembles and you feel so much pity for her it’s just about overwhelming. Then you realize that soon you’ll be leaving the dream bubbles behind and you won’t be able to see her anymore and you gasp because it’s getting hard to breath and your chest feels so tight. Meenah sighs and stands up from her perch to pull you to your feet. She sits down in the chair and pulls you into her lap. “C’mon. Shoosh, quiet Crabby. It’s alright. Things’ll get beta, you’ll sea. Shoosh…”

You sniffle and just cry onto her shoulder, it’s sad to say but you’re tiny enough to fit on her lap and it makes you feel like such a child. A child that shouldn’t have had to deal with all this bullshit the game threw at you, but then again, you’d been kind of prepared for it. Meenah and her group hadn’t been. They’d had an easier life and that made the game so much harder. You can’t imagine how hard it must have been. This of course only makes you cry more, and she just waits patiently for you to calm down. She paps your back gently and shooshes you and kisses your forehead a few times and you really don’t deserve this. You fuck up everything and your quadrants aren’t an exception.

Eventually you calm down and she asks again if you’ve been sleeping, you shake your head and she sighs. “Crab, you gotta sleep. That’s how you glub with your buoy is right? Ya lil blue fish?” You nod. “You’re gonna meet up with him soon but shell, you still gotta talk ta him. You’ve been avoidin’ me too. I don’t like that.” You feel her rest her chin on the top of your head, she sighs. You feel guilty for avoiding everyone but you just really haven’t felt like dealing with anyone, especially since Gamzee broke your moirallegiance and then just fucking disappeared.

‘I’M SORRY MEENAH.’ You type it quick and she just sighs again.

“You gotta talk ta me, Hermit Crab. I know ya probably don’t wanna be all pale with a dead troll like me but I’m worried a-boat ya.” She kisses the top of your head and you feel your eyes well up with fresh tears. “I’m gonna miss the fuck outta you, ya know?”

‘♦’ You show her the message and you can practically feel her smile. She tightens her arms around you and you snuggle into her.

“Yea, pale for you too, Crabcake.” She reaches up and rubs your horns a little and that makes you relax a whole lot. You sigh and nuzzle up against her. “Now tail me what’s got you so glubbin’ worried you can’t go seain’ your Heart?”

You smile, you like how she called John your ‘heart’ because he literally is your heart. You’d probably die without him, which you kinda have been since you stopped seeing him. ‘I’M SCARED. I HAD THIS NIGHTMARE AND THERE WAS THIS GREEN MONSTER AND HE KILLED EVERYONE, ME AND JOHN AND A LOT OF OUR FRIENDS.’ You type out the explanation, you have to backspace once or twice because Meenah rubbing your horns like that is making you a little sleepy and hey, everyone typos when they’re sleepy ok.

“Who, LE?” You frown up at Meenah and she just looks puzzled. “Look Lil Fish, I got Lord Asshole covered, don’t be worryin’ a-boat him. He ain’t gonna be hurtin’ you oar your flush. I’ma make shore a it.” She smiles down at you and you blink at her. Lord English was the big green monster? You frown. “Don’t be makin’ that face, I’ma protect my new lil Diamond and his Heart. So calm down, I’ll make shore nofin’ happens.” She nuzzles you and you can’t help but believe her.

Your eyelids feel heavy and you can’t help but be reminded that you haven’t slept for a few days. To go from sleeping a lot to not at all was difficult and probably not good for you at all.

“Sleep, Hermit Crab. I gotcha. You just take a nap all curled in my arms. You go fishin’ for some mad z’s.” She rubs at your horns and you nod sleepily. You feel safe and secure and even though she’s really cold against you, you feel warm. You purr and rest your head against her shoulder. You barely register the singing and you assume its Meenah. Her voice is so pretty. You should tell her that. You mumble a bunch of jumbled words in an attempt to but are only shooshed. A moment later you’re drifting away and there’s a sweet song about the sea and it’s almost like you’re swaying on the ocean and just like that you’re asleep. And for the first time in a while, you’re actually really glad to be asleep.

 

John’s POV

You hadn’t noticed you’d fallen asleep on the bean bags, but apparently you did because now you’re in a dream bubble. You feel your feet hit the floor and the world around you starts to change. It’s your neighborhood. You frown a bit. This means that Karkat might not be here. You landed in the park a block or two from your house. Ok, whatever. You start to walk back, because walking is calming and you like it even if you can float.

The walk back is short and you don’t mind it. There’s still a bit of snow on the ground and it makes you smile a little because it reminds you of when Karkat last showed up. It’s stupidly ironic because last time you were in this bubble it was Christmas and now it’s Valentine’s Day. You snort because you wish Karkat was here and even though he doesn’t know what Valentine’s Day is you’d still ask him to be your Valentine and give him chocolates or something stupidly cheesy like that and explain what Valentine’s Day is. Then you’d give him a kiss and the two of you would spend the whole day watching shitty movies. You’d even watch all his weird troll romance movies with him, that’s how much you love him.

Ok, that thought makes you chuckle a bit. When you get home the house is quiet, you don’t bother with any other part of the house and go straight upstairs. Out of the corner of your eye you notice that the walls are blank and that’s just a little curious in your mind but whatever. Dream bubbles are weird and sometimes things don’t always match up to how they were in reality. You’re halfway up the stairs when you hear this weird shuffling. Not like imps shuffling, they don’t usually appear in your dream bubbles anyway, more like something hard scratching against the floor. You pause and head back down. Was someone else in the dream bubble with you? You go downstairs and into the kitchen towards the noise. You look around and frown because the noise is definitely closer, but you still don’t know where it’s coming from. You look around and notice a door that doesn’t belong in your house. It’s bigger than normal doors and grey, it doesn’t have a handle and looks a little heavier than most.

You scowl at the door, and debate going in to see what’s making the weird shuffling. You could go upstairs and put a movie on and just ignore it, or you could go down and see who’s invaded your bubble.

The latter seems like a better option. Plus you only have your old kiddy movies upstairs and you’ve seen those a million times already. You decide yes, let’s go down into the strange room with the weird scratching because that’s a great idea. At least you can’t die in a bubble. Well, it’s not like you’d choose a different choice if you were awake and this was in the real world. You’re curious with no real self control in these types of situations. 

You get to the door and Zillyhoo drops out of your specibus, you press the door open and find a staircase going down. What? You sort of expected monsters or something, that’s what happened in these sort of situations, right? You frown and start walking down the stairs. They aren’t long and soon enough open up into a large room with a single lamp. The room isn’t very bright but it’s lit well enough, you look around, the walls are bare and grey, it almost looks like an empty basement. Well, if you weren’t counting the giant white thing sleeping in the corner. You flinch away from it but manage to stay quiet.

Ok Egbert, you’ve fought bigger monsters than this. You can handle this. You tighten your grip on Zillyhoo and quietly step into the room. It’s big enough for you to fight this thing and hey, if you’re lucky it’ll be too big to fight you in such a small room.

You examine it carefully. It’s not an imp or anything from your LOWAS. It’s large, taller than the door. It’s skin(shell?) shines dully, you take note of the pinchers. It’s almost like a big white crab. It’s curled up on some sort of bedding and you can hear it breathing. You inch closer and notice a puff of black near its stomach. It’s not just curled up, but curled around something. 

Carefully you inch your way closer, you don’t want to wake it up and avoiding a fight here would be nice. Not that you’re afraid or anything, just avoiding fights when you can isn’t necessarily bad. When you get a few feet away you can see a small person curled up against the monster’s, uh, stomach? Sure. The little person, or troll, you can see by the grey skin. The little troll is curled up, his black mop of hair covering his face. Your smile widens so much because you know that little black mess of hair.

You eyes drift from the sleeping Karkat to the big white monster, lusus, your brain connects the two from Karkat’s stories to the big white crab creature. This was Karkat’s lusus’ room. It made sense. Sometimes dream bubbles mixed different memories together so this wasn’t odd. You hesitate though because you still don’t want to wake the creature up but you do want to talk to Karkat. Your cells are practically bouncing off each other in excitement; you haven’t seen Karkat in so long! You wanted to jump over the Crab-lusus, you think Karkat called him Crabdad or something. But anyway you wanted to just pick Karkat off the floor and kiss him and hug him and tell him how much you really sorta love him. Tell him how much you missed him; show him how irritated you are for just disappearing without a single word to him. You frown a little. No, you weren’t angry or irritated at him. It was more like you were worried, so very worried. Ok maybe you were a little irritated, but more worried.

You don’t get a chance to do anything before the Crabdad thing shifts and you can tell he’s woken up because he carefully moves away from Karkat before actually getting up. You take a few quiet cautious steps away but manage to make your way back to the stairs, you half step on one of the stairs and slip backwards. So have you ever fallen on stairs? It fucking hurts. Dave would probably say something really stupid like ‘i warned you about the stairs bro’; yeah he’d probably say something like that. You’re sure it’s a thing in his shitty web-comic. Well anyway when you fall back you not only bash your elbows into the stairs trying to catch yourself, which you fail at by the way, but you also manage to hit your head against the wall. Lovely. You yelp and that catches Crabdad’s attention.

You look up to see his white eyes on you and you freeze. It growls at you and you feel the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Shit, shit, shit, not how you wanted this to go. You slowly stand up, Crabdad whirls on you and screeches loudly, you jump and grab Zillyhoo which you dropped when you tripped. Crabdad darts at you and you’re surprised that it’s pretty fast for being so big, you dodge out of the way doing a fantastic youth roll to the side. You hear Crabdad smack against the wall with a loud thud. Your eyes quickly dart to Karkat then back, you don’t see much except maybe he’s stirring? You’re forced to look back at Crabdad because he’s darting at you again and you dodge to the side, Crabdad’s pincher darts out and clamps onto your foot.

You gasp and try to swing at him before Crabdad pulls you off the floor and snatches Zillyhoo out of your grasp. He throws it to the far corner of the room and starts squeezing your ankle. You wince and shout. Damnit!

Out of the corner of your eye you notice a little grey and black blur. Suddenly Karkat’s standing between you and his lusus waving his arms at the big crab. Crabdad skrees at Karkat and growls a little and it’s almost like they’re talking. Karkat makes a few of his weird clicking and growling noises and Crabdad drops you, you of course land on your face. How fucking graceful, Egbert. Karkat paps his lusus and you see him hug the giant white crab. Ok so that’s kind of touching.

Karkat pulls away from his lusus and kneels by you. You realize that you’re still lying on the floor like an idiot and you sit up. You’d have stood up but Karkat throws his arms around your shoulders and kisses you. It’s not a deep passionate kiss but hasty and almost desperate, as if he’s afraid you aren’t really there. You nearly fall over but luckily you’re a little more coordinated than that and you wrap your arms around his waist. He pulls back from the kiss and looks at you. He looks guilty and sad but so happy and you grin so big.

“I missed you, Karkat!” You giggle and hug him tight, he sighs against your shoulder as he hugs back and you’re just so happy. Karkat’s ok. He’s here and safe and he’s totally ok. He nuzzles against you and you can’t help but mimic the motion. “Hehe, I’m glad to see you again too.”

It doesn’t surprise you when he starts purring. It’s a deep gravely rumbling noise and you’ve heard it plenty of times. You smile and rub his back, you really missed him. You missed him so, so much.

When Karkat pulls away he smiles at you and pulls out his PDA, you grin because this is all so familiar. The PDA, Karkat’s messy appearance, the way he glances up at you while typing. You giggle and it earns you a short glare which only makes you giggle more.

‘YOU GIGGLE LIKE A GIRL, EGBERT.’ He shoves the message in your face and it makes you snort. You grab the phone from him and smirk.

‘and you purr like a meow-beast.’ You giggle at the growing red on his cheeks. He was so cute sometimes. “But I like your purring.” You lean forward and kiss his cheek. His skin was so warm against yours; that was something you’d learned from Karkat. Since he was a mutant his body temperature was naturally very high, higher than any rustblood.

Karkat growls quietly, which you think is his version of grumbling. You sigh and hug him. It’s so nice to have him in your arms again, to be with him even if you aren’t really with him. It’s the closest thing you can get to being together, and you don’t plan on being separated like that again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Headcanon: All sea-dwellers sing well, but Meenah and Feferi have extremely exceptional voices.


End file.
